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Arapahoe High security guard says officials stifled threat concerns

Arapahoe High School students head back to class for the first time since the shooting, Jan. 7, 2014.
(RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

A security guard at Arapahoe High School when a senior shot and killed a classmate said school officials discouraged staff from formally documenting concerns about students they saw as troubled.

Cameron Rust, who has been placed on paid administrative leave, said Friday he worries about future violence and danger at the school because administrators refuse to acknowledge problems as they are brewing.

"Arapahoe is still a very unstable environment," Rust told The Denver Post, a day after he posted a lengthy message on Facebook accusing administrators of ignoring warning signs before the Dec. 13 attack. "Something bad is going to happen, and they aren't doing anything about this."

Rust said school officials knew Karl Pierson was a threat well before he entered the school armed with a shotgun, a machete, Molotov cocktails and 125 rounds of ammunition and fatally shot Claire Davis. Claire, 17, died eight days later. Pierson also killed himself.

Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Scott Murphy stood by Arapahoe administrators in a letter sent to parents on Friday. Murphy did not mention Rust by name or directly reference the Facebook post, but he said online discussions that have drawn media attention were mostly "based on inaccurate information, rumor, and innuendo."

"I would encourage all Warriors to wait for the sheriff's investigation to come to a close before drawing conclusions," Murphy wrote. "The sheriff is the spokesperson for the investigation and is the only accurate source for information."

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Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said Rust was "the subject of interviews" from the start of the shooting investigation, and that detectives plan to interview him again.

Rust said school leaders more than once discouraged him from putting his concerns about Pierson and other students in writing.

Administrators showed little interest, he said, after he told his supervisor he saw Pierson sitting alone in the cafeteria in October, looking at pictures of guns on his computer. He said administrators told the security guards "it's his personal computer and there's nothing we can do."

Rust also said school officials took little action after Pierson made a threat against his debate coach Tracy Murphy in September. Authorities have said Murphy was Pierson's main target in the shooting, but he escaped. Pierson wasn't suspended after the threat, but his parents opted to pull him from school for the next three days, Rust said.

Administrators deemed him "not a high-level threat," Rust said. The day before the shooting, Rust said he personally escorted Pierson into the school's attendance office after he had "an altercation" with a teacher. Rust said Pierson had been pounding on the teacher's classroom door, causing a disruption.

Rust and other security guards found him in the cafeteria, visibly upset.

"I don't think he received the help that he needed due to simply a lack of action," Rust said. Officials made the school's security team aware of the threat and warned them to look out for Pierson, he said.

He said Pierson wasn't the only troubled student with whom the school took a lax approach. On Dec. 4, he said, he sent administrators an e-mail detailing his concerns about drug use, the "mental and emotional state of the school," and what he saw as apathy from administrators about school safety. He said his concerns were ignored.

"They told us to report suspicious behavior and we did that and it feels like you're getting actively worked against," Rust said. "We were telling them exactly what was going on and they were ignoring it."

A commission formed after the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School noted that people in the school were aware of the threat the gunmen posed, but that information was never acted upon.

"It's kind of a bumper sticker, but it's true, if you see something, say something," said psychologist and school violence expert John Nicoletti, who testified before the commission. "Some concerns can be dealt with verbally, but others need to have a formalized approach."

Rust said he came forward with the Facebook post "in order to get my emotional and mental turmoil to calm down a little bit" and to give students the answers they need to heal.

Several parents and students expressed support for Rust.

"I know there is likely more to this story, but with the administration and district of LPS not coming forward with any response, it appears that they are in fact covering something up," Monique Lietz-Dennis, whose son is a junior at Arapahoe, said in a Facebook message to The Denver Post.

"(Rust) is being looked at as a 'whistle-blower' and it seems like he is being punished for that. ... If there is any truth to what he claims ... if there is any truth to the comments made by administrators (as he shared) ... then we as a community have a real fundamental problem in our schools."

Shelby Cohen, a sophomore at Arapahoe High, said she sent an e-mail to a school administrator several days ago asking about Rust, but never received a response.

"I don't know both sides of the story, so I don't know what they tried to do and what they didn't do, but from what coach Rust is saying, if they neglected every single thing they brought, that worries me," Cohen said. "You can't take every little tiny detail that everybody does as a threat, but at the same time, with so many events that lead up to this, I think that with what coach Rust is saying that, yeah, maybe they should have done something more to at least help him."

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